gallery: Songs of the Apocalypse

Songs of the Apocalypse is an ongoing series of oil paintings on canvas, evolving around ideas of family, home, identity, personal trauma and healing. Many pieces are titled after a line from a song. I see music more than I hear it, but it has been a constant thread in my life, especially traditional folk music. So these paintings are responses to songs that in some way define my own life, whether they be old ballads or newer pop songs. A quick Google of the titles (in quotation marks) will find you the songs they reference, and in the words of the songs you'll find pieces of the stories.

Why don't you go out there and do something useful?!
Acrylic, graphite and oil on stretched canvas. 4ft x 8ft Lifesize. Referencing the song Drink Before the War, by Sinéad O'Connor, this is my exploration of feelings of impotent rage in the face of apathy towards climate change, and all the related disasters we're facing. I painted them while the Shuswap, where I once lived, is on fire, and I feel helpless. Yes, that's a burrowing owl. They're going extinct due to habitat loss, and what are we doing about it? Fighting fires to save our homes, yes. But our ecology is their home too, and our lives are interconnected. And everything about the way we shut out our eyes and refuse to see is killing us all.



Grandma Frees the Ptarmigan
Acrylic, graphite and oil on stretched canvas. 2ft x 4ft Lifesize.
My grandmother was born in the Canadian Rockies to immigrants from Kitsman, Ukraine. Her mother, like a ptarmigan, which lives in both Ukraine and the Rockies, hid up in a tree as her town was destroyed during one of the many wars in Ukraine. She then came to Canada, and had her children, "boom, boom, boom, one after the other", as my grandmother told it. My Grandma spent her lifetime overcoming and freeing herself from the intergenerational trauma caused by war. This is my tribute to her, and my prayer for peace.


 

 Did you shuffle off the pavements just to let your betters pass?
Acrylic, graphite and oil on stretched canvas. 5ft x 4ft Lifesize, and to be hung close to the floor.

This is a portrait of my young friend, who posed for me at her birthday party, insistent on this determined-looking expression. I painted it to Ewan McColl's song, the Ballad of Accounting, as sung by Peggy Seeger.
There is a penchant for us to look to our children for hope in the face of pending capitalist/climate catastrophe, but what are we doing to give our children hope? Children have been begging us to stop climate change since my parents were children, and after a while, they lose hope, and grow into the world we made for them, patting their own children on the heads as they go out to feed the climate-change machine that we all keep building. When are we going to look into those determined little faces and respect their need for a livable future?

 

Will you love my heart?
Acrylic, graphite and oil on stretched canvas. 4x 24x72" These are hung just above the floor, so that the viewer sees the upper squares at eye level, and the children on the bottom panels are looked down upon.  This piece is titled after a line from Sinéad O'Connor's song Love is Ours, which I used as inspiration during painting.

These are hung just above the floor, so that the viewer sees the upper squares at eye level, and the children on the bottom panels are looked down upon. This is a portrait of my own childhood, at 1, 4, 11 and 16 years. This is, bluntly, a portrait of a child lost in the crossfire of an extremely bitter divorce, and fallout from intergenerational trauma. Maybe it looks bleak, but acknowledgement of the past is the compost from which we grow, and like my parents, I have grown to make some small improvements upon the past. The intention of this piece is to provide space for thinking about children's experience.


 

Use My Lungs and Breathe
Acrylic, graphite and oil on stretched canvas. 3x 12x48" Painted with permission from Will Champlin.


 

No Time Instead of It All
Acrylic, graphite and oil on split stretched canvas. 4x8 ft. This is hung just above the floor, so the subject stands just taller than life-size.

I painted this portrait of my husband to John Lennon's song, Working Class Hero, as sung by Marilyn Manson. It's about the loss of our souls to workday drudgery; watching our world crumble to capitalism-fuelled climate-change, while our employment feeds the machine, and without our jobs we'd die. So we keep going and returning; going and returning. And when do we have time to build a sustainable future?


If it weren't for the love
Graphite, wax crayon and oil on stretched canvas.


(I open my mouth and) Nothing Comes Out
Graphite, wax crayon and oil on stretched canvas.

 

 
 

Identity 1 & 2
Graphite and oil on stretched canvas.


 

Titles withheld.
Graphite, wax crayon and oil on stretched canvas.




Do you see me? Does anyone care?
Acrylic, graphite, wax crayon and oil on stretched canvas.

 

Interference 1 & 2
Graphite and oil on stretched & torn canvas. The entirety of W.B. Yeats' poem, The Stolen Child, is written in silver metallic paint on the pair.


Three Craws
Graphite and oil on stretched canvas. Triptych totaling 10x5ft.


Apocalypse in Pieces
Mixed media on reclaimed BC Binning panels. I was born just four months before Bert Binning died, but his wife Jessie was a dear friend of my parents, and eventually a grandmother figure to me, as well as one of my biggest supporters. Through Mrs. Binning I inherited some of Bert's brushes, his paint palette, and a few panels. I use the brushes often, and finally put the panels to use with this painting. Our civilization seems to be faltering, but I believe it's in growing ourselves up from all the beautiful pieces that we will thrive.

Roots
Oil on stretched canvas.

  
Escaping the Nest

Graphite and oil on stretched canvas. Triptych totaling 12x5ft.


 

Evolution
Felt and bone headdress... sometimes with electric candles.